Du Page Joins The Top 50

Du Page County jumped into the top 50 U.S. counties with a population increase of 122,808 during the 1980s, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The county, which has 781,666 people, now ranks 49th in the nation, ahead of such counties as Salt Lake (725,956) and San Francisco (723,959).

Still, it is far behind some other suburban counties such as Orange County, Calif., which ranks 5th with 2,410,556 people, and St. Louis County, which is 31st with 993,529 people.

In 1980, Du Page ranked 53rd in the nation with 658,858 people.

Meanwhile, Cook County held onto its position as the country`s Second County, even though Chicago lost its title as Second City.

The new figures from the Census Bureau show Cook County solidly in second place in the nation despite a 3 percent decline in population.

With 5,105,067 people, Cook is still nearly twice as big as the next largest county, Harris County, Texas, where 2.8 million people live, most of them in Houston. The population in Harris boomed by 17 percent during the 1980s, the figures show.

Nearly half of Cook County`s people-2,321,341-now live in the suburbs, where the population is up 3 percent over 1980.

The decline in the total Cook population was due to a 7 percent drop in the number of Chicagoans. In 1980, Chicago was the second largest city in the U.S. with 3,005,072 people. Ten years later, it had just 2,783,726, and ranked No. 3 behind Los Angeles with 3,485,398.

Los Angeles County is far and away the largest in the nation with 8,863,164 people, an increase of 19 percent.

In fact, the county`s growth was so rapid in the 1980s that it added nearly 1.4 million people. Only 18 U.S. counties have total populations larger than that.

The other four counties in the Chicago metropolitan area made strong population gains over the past decade, but that didn`t translate, in every case, to movement up the list of counties.

Lake County, with 516,418 people, moved into the top 100 counties. In 1980, it ranked 106th. Now, after a 17 percent increase in population, it is 90th.

McHenry County had a 24 percent increase in population in the 1980s and now has 183,241. As a result, it moved up from 287th to 264th place.

But two other counties lost ground on the list, even though they had population gains of 10 percent or more.

In 1980, Will County had 324,460 people and ranked 131st. Over the next decade, it added 32,853 people, but it still fell to 143rd place.

Similarly, Kane County grew by 39,066 people and now has 317,471, a 14 percent increase. Nonetheless, it dropped from 156th place in 1980, to 159th place 10 years later.

That`s because other counties were recording even larger gains, such as the increases of 30 and 40 percent that were routine in many Florida and California counties.